Thursday, July 13, 2006

Of e-books and book racks

I once dreamed of having a library of my own; you know, the kind that Uncle Scrooge had; one with a ladder and huge racks lining an entire room, an easy chair and a small fireplace. Then I found e-books. Thousands upon thousands of them. And then there was talk of book readers which more and more closely mimick real books without taking up that space. So supposing they finally made one real-book look-alike capable of storing a million books, what would I decorate my study-room with? Much of the charm of real books is being able to put them up in a rack where visitors can come and stare at them with awe. The books you have in your book-racks convey, in some sense, the kind of person you are. With all the million books now hidden away in a tiny device lying around on a desk, who/what will tell visitors to my house what kind of person I am? I think I'll still keep real books around. After all, a library with so many books that you need a ladder is so cool!

I came across something called a librarything (http://www.librarything.com). Its a virtual bookrack(s). One good feature is that we can find out others who own similar books. Does that lead to anything useful? May be. May be not.